{"id":611388,"date":"2026-05-30T03:12:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T03:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/611388\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T03:12:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T03:12:22","slug":"are-heat-spikes-becoming-more-common-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/611388\/","title":{"rendered":"Are &#8216;heat spikes&#8217; becoming more common?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">How quickly temperatures rise isn&#8217;t just about how warm the air starts out, but how dry the land and atmosphere are.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Dry ground heats up faster than moist ground because less energy is used for evaporation and more goes directly into raising temperature.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There is strong evidence that UK summer soils are becoming drier as the climate warms, with Met Office projections showing earlier seasonal drying and more frequent droughts, particularly in southern and eastern England.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The same principle applies higher above the ground. Large, slow\u2011moving areas of high pressure &#8211; often called blocking highs or heatdomes &#8211; are large areas of sinking air.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Like squeezing a sponge, the descending motion dries the air out and when you add in the fact the air is compressed, this also adds to the air heating up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While blocking highs may not be happening more often, studies suggest that when they do occur the heat and dryness they bring are more intense than in the past.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As Professor Sarah Perkins\u2011Kirkpatrick, climate scientist from the Australian National University puts it: &#8220;The dice are loaded for it to be hotter more quickly\u2026as soon as high pressure systems move over, bang, the temperature goes up.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How quickly temperatures rise isn&#8217;t just about how warm the air starts out, but how dry the land&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-611388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}